Lost Opportunities (A Meditation)

There are the obvious ones -- buying stock in Apple in the 70s, saying yes to the beautiful girl at a college party who confided that tequila made her clothes come off, telling your mother you loved her before she slipped deep into Alzheimer's.

But then there are the not so obvious lost opportunities. I wished I had kissed more "owies" when the boys showed me their wounds, or listened better to a student who was obsessed with writing about violence and who later shot another boy to death in an altercation.

The thing is, opportunities are not just locked in the past, they are a constant every moment of my waking life. What I am saying is that there are choices being made right now, as we engage in this e-interaction. We choose how we respond to constantly changing situations.

On one hand, where I mostly reside, there is the default set of reactions that I have learned over years of conditioning. This is not always the "best" way to respond; it is the knee-jerk reflex of the un-reflecting, un-selective psyche: pushing the "send" button after composing a clever but divisive, injurious email, flipping the bird at an unattentive driver, writing blog entries when papers need to be graded.

There are other ways. Seizing that split second between stimulus and response and considering what is the more effective path to "right action" can radically transform any situation from separation to connection.

Terry Dobbs, an aikido martial arts master, was fond of telling a story of a time when he was on a bus in Japan. A drunken giant of a man was on a violent tear. He was beating men and had kicked a pregnant woman in the belly. Terry was at the point of tearing into him to save the day, when an old man, sitting on the bus with his wife, split the air with "YI!"

He told the giant that he and his wife liked drinking cherry wine. He then asked the stunned drunkard if he liked cherry wine.

The drunk collapsed in grief and said he loved cherry wine and that he and his wife, who just died, shared many intimate moments over glasses of cherry wine.

Terry, of course, realized that he witnessed a real master respond to the scene.

While dramatic, this circumstance is just a passing moment, like all moments. With a moment of pause, reflection, and consideration, the moment can be turned from suffering to joy.

Opportunity runs in front of me, like a river. All I have to do is open to it.

Now what was that about tequila?